There are a lot of prominent local folks with bad PR right now.

Carl Green at the PHA.

John Estey and John Matheussen at the Delaware River Port Authority.

Arlene Ackerman at the School District.

Is it because the press is acting more like vigilantes? Or is it because these people have just screwed up royally? Is there anything their public relations pro’s can do to turn the tide?

Probably not. At least not without significant and broad organizational buy-in. As the New York Times pointed out Sunday in an article that should be mandatory reading for all executives, the public doesn’t want clever spin; they want an acknowledgement of failure or weakness and they want true contrition.

So while lawyers for the School Reform Commission say it’s okay for Ackerman to get paid in advance for vacation days she does not intend to use, it isn’t okay in the court of public opinion. 

As we’ve pointed out here before, there is a very clear underlying question to every query you’re asked in a crisis communication situation – “Do you care?” When you run the Housing Authority and make over $300K but somehow can’t manage to pay your mortgage, it looks like you don’t care. When you don’t show up to work after people find out, it really looks like you don’t care.

In a crisis, you need to 1) Validate concern and 2) Show action. In each of these cases the organizations have failed to validate the concern that public money is being wasted (although DRPA did vote to change its governance rules – a step in the right direction).

The longer you drag your feet on validating the concern, the worse the crisis gets.

Just ask Tony Heyward.

By now you’ve no doubt heard of the recent case of “air rage” involving a JetBlue flight attendant. (Click here for a recap.) It’s become a larger-than-life story that has elevated Steven Slater to a household name and, for many, to the status of working class hero (despite, mind you, actions warranting felony charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment).

So how has JetBlue responded to the unflattering news coverage? Through a single blog post.

There are two things of interest regarding this approach: first, it’s a complete 180 from 2007, when then-CEO David Neeleman spent an entire 24-hour news cycle apologizing profusely to the nation (via Today Show, Late Show, New York Times, etc.) for an operational fiasco that grounded thousands of JetBlue travelers. Second, it appears to have been quite effective. The blog post, equal parts self-deprecation and legalese, has done more than serve as an artful way of saying “no comment.” According to one study, the tone of the online buzz about JetBlue improved significantly on the day the entry was posted compared to the previous day.

This goes against conventional wisdom when it comes to crisis communications – that is, show action and validate concern. JetBlue took no action and didn’t do much to validate concern, other than to thank their 2,300 inflight crew members for, well, not acting like Steven. Certainly, there’s never a cookie cutter approach to crisis communications. In this case, as FastCompany suggests, perhaps the lesson learned is that “sometimes the best response to a PR disaster is a single blog post and a tight-lipped smile.”

General Stanley McChrystal and his staff have succeeded in shaking up how the war in Afghanistan will be run.  It came, however, at the cost of their jobs.  Michael Hastings, a reporter from Rolling Stone Magazine got the opportunity of a lifetime when a volcano eruption grounded him in France with the general and his staff for an extended road trip to Berlin.  They granted him unprecedented access to the inner workings of the high command.  Ultimately, their sharp, uncensored rhetoric lost McChrystal his job.

The assignment, as executive editor Eric Bates laid it out, was a simple profile of the general.  Hastings goal was to give the audience a look at the strategy in Afghanistan through the eyes of its architect.  Hastings wrote that story, but for some reason, McChrystal and his staff in no way censored their average day-to-day banter when the reporter was around.  They made no stipulations as to which conversations could and could not be used in the article, and even seemed to direct their snide comments about officials towards Hastings that they may be included in the story.  What was the logic behind this?  Was there any?  Did anyone stop and say, “We could all get canned for this?”  The reporter found himself asking the very same questions.  In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Michael Hastings seemed to indicate that the general and his staff seemed to have some sort of agenda…that they wanted to shake things up a bit.

So from a PR standpoint, why and how did this happen?  Hastings posited that McChrystal’s press advisors might have accepted the request in order to expose the situation surrounding Afghanistan and the strategy therein to a new demographic.  This is a perfectly sound reasoning to have Rolling Stone come in and do a profile.  The blunder occurred in not monitoring or prepping General McChrystal on how to behave and what to say around the reporter.  One would think that a seasoned military man would know what is acceptable rhetoric and what crosses the line, but as Hastings pointed out in an interview, “When war becomes your life, it makes it difficult to create good policy.”  Perhaps it also prevents you from realizing when you are walking head first into a PR disaster and potentially the end of an otherwise illustrious career.

For the past four years, cyclist Floyd Landis has lived by a single mantra: deny, deny, deny. After being stripped of his Tour de France title in 2006 for failing a doping test, Landis finally admitted that he was in fact using performance-enhancing drugs when he won the race. But rather than simply admitting to it and moving on with his life after years of legal struggle and public shame, he decided to point the finger at some of his former teammates, including the legendary Lance Armstrong.

In a series of emails sent to several cycling officials and sponsors, Landis accused Armstrong and others in using performance-enhancing drugs just hours before the start of the fifth stage of the Tour de California. So what was Lance to do? Wait until the end of the race to respond? Did he allow the accusations to simmer for a bit before confronting them? No, he confronted them head on, acting quickly and decisively. With hardly any time to spare before the beginning of Thursday’s race, the seven time Tour de France winner held a short press conference right outside his bus, saying he has “nothing to hide.”

From a PR perspective, this was a smart move by Lance. He is more than an individual― he is a brand, the personified form of LiveStrong. He has much more at stake than Floyd Landis or anyone in cycling for that matter. He could have just let this play out for a while before making a statement, but if he did, he would have only left room for people to speculate on these accusations. Not only was his reaction clear and concise, it was timely, and that may be even more important here. There is still going to be debate about whether or not these people were using PEDs, but for now, Lance is leading the PR pack on this one. He came out strong, he came out quick, and he got the message across. Maybe LiveStrong isn’t just a brand name after all.

I’ll bet President Obama right now is regretting his ill-timed March 30 announcement to open up vast expanses of America’s coastline for offshore drilling.

From a strictly PR perspective, much of the coverage to date has centered on how the disaster and clean-up efforts will ultimately reflect on BP – whose “Beyond Petroleum” tagline now seems both more absurd and appropriate than ever. And then there have been critiques of the Obama administration for failing to act quicker, of policies that have allowed more than 3,500 production platforms in the Gulf, and of the rig’s owner, Transocean, who has largely managed to stay out of the limelight.

More interesting to me, though, is how the major environmental organizations have seemed slow to harness public outrage and speak out against offshore drilling and push for clean energy reform. More than a week went by following the explosion before I received any related correspondence from the Sierra Club or NRDC, both of whose email lists I subscribe to. In the meantime, I got notices about Yellowstone’s buffalo in danger, stopping new coal plants in Pennsylvania, and blocking efforts to legalize whale hunting – which made the absence of news about the Gulf spill all the more alarming.

A recent article in the Times argued that this disaster ultimately won’t do much to seriously impede offshore drilling in the Gulf – America is simply too desperate for the oil and the jobs. That prediction will certainly hold true if environmental activists can’t seize this moment as a rallying cry to demand clean energy reform. Only then can we take steps to wean this country off of its oil dependence once and for all.